"The same system is also pursued by lodging-house keepers. They will become
responsible if the workmen requiring security will undertake to lodge at
their house."

But of course the men most interested in keeping up the system are those
who buy the clothes of these cheap shops. And who are they? Not merely
the blackguard gent--the butt of Albert Smith and Punch, who flaunts at
the Casinos and Cremorne Gardens in vulgar finery wrung out of the souls
and bodies of the poor; not merely the poor lawyer's clerk or reduced
half-pay officer who has to struggle to look as respectable as his class
commands him to look on a pittance often no larger than that of the day
labourer--no, strange to say--and yet not strange, considering our modern
eleventh commandment--"Buy cheap and sell dear," the richest as well as the
poorest imitate the example of King Ryence and the tanners of Meudon, At
a great show establishment--to take one instance out of many--the very
one where, as we heard just now, "however strong and healthy a man may be
when he goes to work at that shop, in a month's time he will be a complete
shadow, and have almost all his clothes in pawn"--

"We have also made garments for Sir ---- ----, Sir ---- ----, Alderman
----, Dr. ----, and Dr. ----. We make for several of the aristocracy. We
cannot say whom, because the tickets frequently come to us as Lord ---- and
the Marquis of ----. This could not be a Jew's trick, because the buttons
on the liveries had coronets upon them. And again, we know the house is
patronized largely by the aristocracy, clergy, and gentry, by the number of
court-suits and liveries, surplices, regimentals, and ladies' riding-habits
that we continually have to make up. _There are more clergymen among the
customers than any other class, and often we have to work at home upon
the Sunday at their clothes, in order to get a living._ The customers are
mostly ashamed of dealing at this house, for the men who take the clothes